On a recent episode of The Sales Hunter Podcast, Mark sat down with Larry Levine, author of Selling in a Post Trust World and Selling from the Heart, to break down one of the toughest challenges in sales today: how to maintain margins while tackling competitive pricing and customer pushback.
The “Price Game” Trap
Navigating price increases in the current market isn’t easy, especially in industries where products are viewed as commodities. Larry Levine has lived that first hand, selling copiers in an aggressive, price-driven market for decades. Early in his career, he admits to falling into the price trap.
“I got caught in your prices too high, lower your price, all that…I sacrificed a lot because I was of that opinion. If I match price or I lower price, then everything’s all going to be well.”
The lesson? Matching price rarely secures long-term trust or profitability, rather it erodes both confidence and commissions.
Move the Conversation to Value
When market dynamics push price to the forefront, many reps freeze or default to discounting. But the real skill is steering the conversation away from price and toward value.
Levine emphasizes that sellers need to “have confident business conversations with key decision-makers and influencers and understand what experience they’re expecting from a salesperson.” Shifting the narrative from products to real business outcomes is the difference maker.
If reps focus on bringing “meaningful business substance” into every discussion, price becomes just one part of a much larger conversation.
Confidence Starts at the Top
A lack of confidence among sales team members doesn’t start with them. Actually, it’s often systemic. Levine points to a critical leadership responsibility: consistent coaching.
“Salespeople are getting hammered on price because you guys are allowing it to happen. The confidence level of your sellers is sometimes pretty low. The believability in themselves and their messaging is not there…They’ve been taught how to operate in a transactional environment and make it about price.”
Leaders can’t expect their teams to “sell on value” without equipping them with the mindset, skills, and habits of value-based selling. It’s not a switch that flips overnight. Coaching and development, tailored to each rep, are essential.
Not All Sellers (or Buyers) Are the Same
Just as every customer is unique, so is every seller. Yet, most organizations coach and train everyone identically, missing an opportunity to unlock individual performance.
Levine makes it clear that “most leaders don’t know what makes their salespeople tick and what are they capable of. They know their numbers and they assume they know their weakness, but they really don’t know what’s under the hood.”
Effective leaders invest time understanding each rep’s motivation, mindset, and abilities, and then adapt coaching accordingly. Blanket approaches rarely work.
Questions Drive Value
A fundamental habit separates professionals from price-driven order takers: asking insightful questions. When salespeople don’t probe to uncover what “too expensive” really means, they forfeit the chance to bring genuine value.
Without uncovering real needs, price sensitivity will always dominate. Educating and challenging buyers on total cost of ownership and the business impact of solutions moves conversations into more strategic territory.
Pulling Up the Mirror
When deals devolve into negotiations over the lowest price, it’s often a sign of deeper issues. Leaders must ask themselves hard questions: Are we coaching for business outcomes? Are we focused too much on quarterly numbers rather than long-term customer value?
Pulling out of the price spiral starts with self-awareness, a shift in mindset, and a commitment to development not just for sellers, but for leadership as well.
The Heart of Professional Selling
Wrapping up, Levine encourages all sellers to make a conscious choice about their professional identity:
“Do you want to be known as a sales rep who sells whatever you sell, or do you want to be known as a business professional who happens to sell what you sell?”
Navigating price increases and customer pushback isn’t just about negotiation or product pitching. It’s about building trust, providing value, and leading conversations that matter. Sales leaders who coach to these fundamentals, and reps who embrace them, will find themselves not only defending margins, but building lasting relationships and success.
Mark Hunter :
Selling on price, dealing with the price increase. It’s becoming a harder and harder issue every day because of what’s going on in the marketplace. And yet through it all, we still have to maintain margins. Oh, margins. How do you maintain margins when you’re faced with competitive pressures? With me today, Larry Levine. He’s going to help us unpack the issue because he is the author of Selling in a Post Trust World and Selling from the Heart. The show begins right now. You’re listening to the Sales Hunter podcast with Mark Hunter, where the focus is
Larry Levine :
to help you as a salesman, sell
Mark Hunter :
with confidence and integrity.
Larry Levine :
And now, here’s your host.
Mark Hunter :
There is nobody better to talk about price, margin and how you deal with it than Larry Levine. Larry, welcome to the show. I’m going to hold the audience from the Heart and your other book, Selling in a Post Trust World. Okay, Larry, let’s cut to the chase, because we’re all facing increased prices, especially if you’re in a commodity space or, or you perceive that you’re in a commodity space, because nobody is in a commodity space. You just allow your customers to tell you, okay, I’m sorry, I’m gonna get on a rant. Why don’t you take the floor? How do we deal with this?
Larry Levine :
Well, I. I tell you what, I’m going to take everyone back, but it’s going to answer this. This whole question on Price. For 30 years, I lived in a commodity world. I sold copiers for a living.
Mark Hunter :
That’s scary.
Larry Levine :
That is so. So there’s a reason why I bring this up, because early on in my career, I got caught in this price game. I got caught in your prices too high, lower your price, all that. I was sensitive to it. I was, I still am to this day, a highly relational seller. I just wanted my customers to be happy. And in doing so, I sacrificed a lot because I was of that opinion. If I match price or I lower price, then everything’s all going to be, well.
Larry Levine :
Well, as it turned out, it train wrecked me. It train wrecked me. And when you live a vast majority of your sales career on commissions, you’re taken away from your livelihood. And where I flipped the switch on all of this is. And I just. I just urge people just to. To catch with me on this is when I learned how to bring meaningful business value and meaningful business substance and have a conversation around business things, not my products, that was the outcome of all of this. But when I can bring business conversation to the forefront and then I can steer this in a direction where I understood what kind of experience they expected from a salesperson.
Larry Levine :
I changed the dynamic, but I changed the conversation. And I steered this in a completely different direction, saying, hey, I understand prices of concern, but if everything’s all the same, then what else? And I soon learned that if I can have confident business conversations with key decision makers and influencers and understand what experience they’re expecting from a salesperson, and it changed the dynamics and the narrative of the whole conversation. And it shifted it away from price and it shifted it onto things that I knew I can control. That was how I show up and how I serve.
Mark Hunter :
Wow. I gotta. There’s a study I just saw that of customer surveyed customers said only 20% of salespeople bring value to.
Larry Levine :
To them.
Mark Hunter :
Only 20%. That’s scary. That means 80% are bringing no value. No wonder, no wonder customers don’t want to deal with salespeople. So how do we do this? Because again, you’re getting beat. We’re getting beat up on price. People are getting beat up on price and we just suddenly want to talk about daisies, lollipops. How do we, how do we shift that conversation?
Larry Levine :
Walk us through this stuff I think is we as leaders, and I’m speaking to CEOs and presidents when I say this. VPs of sales, senior level leaders. We have to make a commitment to coaching. And some of y’ all might be going, hey, Larry, where are you going with this? Well, the reason why your salespeople are getting hammered on price is because you guys are allowing it to happen. The confidence level of your sellers are, are sometimes pretty low. The believability in themselves and their messaging is not there. They got low self worth. They’ve been taught how to operate in a transactional environment and make it about price.
Larry Levine :
Why? Because something tells me it’s coming from upstairs and they’re just products of the environments that they’re all raised in, Mark. So if you want to change as a leader, if you want to change the dynamics of all of this, it doesn’t happen overnight. The reason why y’ all are having price sensitive conversations just didn’t happen yesterday. This has been brewing for years, I might even say decades. So you can’t just turn the ship and in a week, all of a sudden you, you’re going to have a room full of sellers who sell on value and sell on experience with discipline and consistency. It’s the willingness upstairs to coach these people to the skills necessary, the mindset necessary, and the heartset necessary for them to change the conversation with the buyers and the decision makers.
Mark Hunter :
Okay, I love where you’re going with this because you’ve hit on several things. First of all, it’s amazing how we become the result of who we’re taught by. I mean, this is a parent child relationship because too many managers, they don’t know how to sell on anything other than price. Second piece, we were in a fairly strong environment for a long time and I don’t think sellers really learned how to sell. Now suddenly we’re in a price oriented economy and whoa, they’re having to work and they don’t know, they don’t know how to do it. They don’t know how to shift the conversation. Because I think I got a theory and I, and I want you to talk about this. When the customer automatically says, you need to lower your price, the mentality of the sales person is, I got to provide customer service, I got to lower my price.
Mark Hunter :
In other words, the customer asks, the customer gets. Right. I mean, thoughts on that?
Larry Levine :
Yeah. And it, and it’s, it’s so interesting because, and I, I’ve witnessed it. I’ve literally witnessed it when I do ride withs, with salespeople and just how I, I mean, I’m just sitting right next to them. I don’t say anything because I just want to see what happens. And I can just see the body language and the whole dynamics change. And I know they’re getting sweaty palms and they’re getting anxious and they’re tapping their feet and all of that. This goes back, I’m telling you, this goes back to confidence. And we, as leaders, we got to practice all this stuff.
Larry Levine :
And if you want to have a room full of sales professionals, not a room full of sales reps, you got to constantly be practicing this on a daily basis. Because this is real world stuff. It’s happening to the most tenured of salespeople, all the way to the least tenured. And I would be co, I mean, if I was a sales leader, I’d be coaching a room full of sellers on just peeling this thing back. So rather than insert, buyer, insert, whatever the names of the titles of these people are, when salespeople hear your price is too high, or work on the price, whatever, whatever they’re talking about around price, they start selling more. Hey, let me see what I can do about providing a discount. If I can do this, can we do that? And you just get in this transactional tap dance that happens on all the time rather than just pumping the brakes. If I was a seller, I’d pump the brakes and I go into Columbo mode.
Larry Levine :
And this is where you got to have detectiveness behind you with your conversations. There’s a reason why somebody is saying that.
Mark Hunter :
Yeah. And you.
Larry Levine :
And, and it could very well be your price is too high. But it’s usually not the case. It’s like, hey, there’s no value around here. I don’t see any value in our conversation. So I, I know I can take you down the price jungle rather than just saying, hey, I totally understand. With all due respect, help me understand my price is too high in comparison to what. Help me understand my price is too high regarding what. And then just go silent, don’t say a word.
Larry Levine :
After that,
Mark Hunter :
you just hit on something else. Because I think the one of the big weaknesses salespeople have is they don’t ask questions. They do not ask questions. And you got to get the be asking the customer questions and what are the insights that you can bring to them regarding their customers. Regarding, you know, when you go and begin to look far enough downstream, you can see why the customer needs to work with you and why they need what you. But if you’re not providing value in the absence of value, low price is everything. And yeah, people are going to 100%,
Larry Levine :
I’d say, in absence of any kind of meaningful value. Because what salespeople think is value, eight or nine times out of 10, it’s not what the person on the other side of that conversation sees as value. And I really want to push on this and take this in the direction. This is kind of a little selling from the heart slant, Mark. If you just allow me to go down that road is this goes back to heart set, this goes back to mindset. And here’s where I’m going with this. I see this play out. Doesn’t matter if it’s a tenured salesperson or not.
Larry Levine :
This happens. This is happening on a daily basis, this price pushback. But when you as a seller for some reason struggle with confidence and you struggle with believability in yourself and your messaging and for whatever reason you have low self worth, you allow this stuff to happen. You, you as the salesperson allow it to happen. That’s your responsibility. Yeah. And I’ll put some of this on the sales manager or the sales leader because of lack coaching and training, but you’re in sales for a reason, which means you got to up your game, which means you gotta, you gotta bring personal development to all this and say, hey, I’m not going to allow this if I’m not getting coaching and training, I gotta, it’s incumbent upon myself to figure this out. But I’ll tell you this.
Larry Levine :
When you can increase your confidence. So if you’re lacking some of this, find a business coach. Find somebody out there that can help you mentor yourself along that. Because when you hold firm with confidence and you have a business executive conversation with a CEO or president, they look at things completely different than mid level and low level managers when it comes to price. I’m here to tell you this, Mark, and you already know this. When you start going upstairs, price doesn’t become an issue. It’s return on investment, return on time. But when you’re on this lower level to mid level decision makers where they got to mitigate risk, they’re perception oriented and all that, that they’re judging themselves and they’re going to squash you on price.
Larry Levine :
Just, just simmer on that for a second. You guys are at the wrong level having all of these conversations around Price.
Mark Hunter :
Oh, preach it, preach it, preach it. I love where you’re going with this because it is, it’s all about the total cost of ownership and the total benefit of ownership. And if we can’t get the customer thinking in that regard, which goes back to this whole thing that our mindset going into a sales call predetermines the results we get coming out. And like you said, you’re not confident. It is amazing at how it shows. It shows so quickly. You brought up something else that drives me nuts. I’ll be working with salespeople.
Mark Hunter :
Well, my management isn’t doing anything for me my age. Hey, hold it, hold it. It’s on you. It is on you. That’s why we do podcasts like this, why I have this podcast and you have your podcast. And we, there are learning tools out there for you to grow because again, what you’re doing is you’re just making it a big fat excuse. Excuses don’t help you make your quota, period.
Larry Levine :
Oh, that’s so good. Excuses stunt your growth. And here’s what’s interesting. We’ve brought net selling from the heart with sales index. We brought in data and analytics behind this conversation that we’re having. And so we look at 21 core characteristics of selling from will to sell to sales, DNA to tactical competencies. And what’s really interesting, this will to sells, we call it the heart said it’s your foot on the gas pedal. And we start taking a look at a burning desire to succeed, commitment, responsibility, outlook, motivation.
Larry Levine :
And what concerns me to no end is the amount of finger Pointing, which is this responsibility. I will do these certain things. If these certain things happen, I will become a better salesperson if my company invests in me. I will become better at price negotiating if my sales, if my company trains me on price negotiation. That’s the finger pointing aspect of this. There’s another aspect. It’s mindset. When your heart sets all broken and all out of whack and you got all these self limiting beliefs around money and the constant quest to be liked by others and the way you buy things is the way everybody else thinks they should buy things.
Larry Levine :
It, it lends for, it lends for some wackiness that’s going out there. We as executives, we got to start pumping the brakes on things and going, hey, I, I gotta understand a couple things. What makes my people tick and what are they capable of above and beyond what they’re doing? How do I coach them through all this? Well, the way I coach them through this is each individual is different. I gotta understand this straight across the board with all my sellers. That makes sense.
Mark Hunter :
Yes. Hey, unpack that some more. Because what you’re saying is that each person has their own selling style.
Larry Levine :
To a certain degree, yes. But here’s what’s interesting. We’re all different human beings, yet we as leaders are coaching. And I’m using coaching lightly and training lightly. Everyone the same way.
Mark Hunter :
Yes, I, I, we have a, I’ll
Larry Levine :
say our sales people are discounting too much. There’s not enough new business. So we bring in some trainer to talk about price negotiating and how to prospect better. Yet only a small percentage of it even lands with the sales people.
Mark Hunter :
Why?
Larry Levine :
Because some of the other sales people are really good at it. I want us as leaders to stop and think. Not every one of your sellers need to be coached and trained on the exact same thing. But most leaders don’t know what makes their salespeople tick and what are they capable of. So we’re all bringing them in a room, we’re all having a party, and we’re all training and coaching these people on the exact same thing. But yet, as a baseball term, I’m batting a thousand. Asking executives what makes your people tick and what are they capable of? And nobody can give me an answer because not one leader knows. They know their numbers and they assume they know their weakness, but they really don’t know what’s under the hood of their salespeople.
Larry Levine :
So they treat them all the same when it comes to coaching and training, which is a big mistake.
Mark Hunter :
Okay, now let’s go under the hood on this because again, you are poking the bear here because we, we talk about how every customer is different. Got to understand the customer. You got to understand what are their specific needs, what are their, you know, in order for us to really deliver value stuff. And yet for some reason we don’t apply that to salespeople. It’s the same thing. It’s the exact same thing.
Larry Levine :
Percent 100 I’ll go, I’ll go down this motivation angle just for a second. We all think as, as leaders that sales people are coin operated machines. They’re not. They’re not. In fact, I got into a heated conversation on a social platform with a post around just highly compensate salespeople and just, right, just let them do their thing. And I go, well, great, you can have the best compensation program in the world. But why are 60 or 70% of people or whatever that percentage is, right, are not hitting their plan? If salespeople are all money motivated and they have the best comp programs, why are they still not hitting their quota? It’s way deeper than that, folks. So as a leader, if you’re training and coaching your salespeople by saying, hey, all your customers are different, we got to understand their goals, initiatives and challenges.
Larry Levine :
Then hold the mirror in front of our face as a leader and say, well guess what? That applies to my sales people. And each one of my X number of salespeople are all at unique strengths and weaknesses. They’re all human beings with different mindsets, different heart sets, different skill sets. But yet we’re coaching and training these people the exact same way. There’s a disconnect somewhere here.
Mark Hunter :
Oh, I tell you what, what you are doing, you, you have poked the bear about 10 times and I love this because this is this whole premise that every individual is motivated in a different manner. Now let’s get something else out on the table. No manager can motivate their people. All they can do is create an environment for the people to motivate themselves. That’s all they can do. But I got to take the time to understand what drives them, what, what trips their trigger and then help them work towards achieving that, to bettering that. But I’ll tell you what I find so many, so few sales managers really know what the professional and personal goals are of the people who work for them. Agree.
Larry Levine :
Oh boy, oh boy. No, no, I, there’s no disagreement here, mark. I totally, 100% agree. I’ve, I’ve looked a group of mid level managers in the eyes and I said, do you know what gets your salespeople out of bed in the morning? Literally, when they flip the covers off, they put their feet on the ground. Do you know why they get up to do what they do in your work? Nobody can give me that answer. Nobody. I said you got to understand the why behind all this. You got to understand what motivates these people to do what they do.
Larry Levine :
Because I know there’s three types of motivation. There’s intrinsically motivated people. There’s intrinsically motivated people, there’s altruistically motivated people. Now, each one of us has an artful blend of all three, but one kind of stands out more than the other. And based on my observation, this is my opinion, just based on what I see out there, we as leaders are trying to motivate salespeople extrinsically 100% of the time. Let’s do something with the comp. Let’s create a quarterly bonus, let’s create a monthly spiff. And then they get all pissed off when they sit in a leadership meeting.
Larry Levine :
They go, gosh darn it. How come these people didn’t actively pursue these monthly spiffs and quarterly bonuses? Guess what? They might be intrinsically motivated can give a rats. You know, what about these bonuses that you guys are creating for them?
Mark Hunter :
Oh man, don’t get me old going on spiffs. I just was with a, a sales EP today and we were talking about spiffs and the, the, the mis motivation that that creates. And think about how that transcends down to customers. Think about what the impact that that is on customers. It’s huge. But it’s because we think that we can turn this dial up and it’s the right. No, it’s not the right dial. I’m going to come right back to.
Mark Hunter :
It’s it, it’s. You got to know the heart of the salesperson, the heart and the mind of the salesperson, what motivates them, what drives them. And just as the same way that we say the same thing about our customers, you got to understand the customer’s heart, the customer’s mind. It’s no different. And yet, for some reason, this all gets lost in the sea of I gotta make my number this quarter.
Larry Levine :
And when you, and when you operate in this, I gotta make this number this quarter. This is what happens. You get this transactional mindset, you get this transactional approach. People sense that, they smell it. And then pretty soon, guess what, you’re in these price sensitive conversations and you know, just think about what happened. The end of Q1. Right. The last week of Q1 is when it all rears its ugly head.
Larry Levine :
It’s going to rear its ugly head here at the end of Q2. Right. It’s going to rear its ugly head. The end of Q3, it’s going to rear its ugly head come year end if you’re on a calendar year. And at some point point leaders got to look themselves in the eye, hold that mirror right in front of their face and say, you know what, I’m the one that’s allowing and creating all of this,
Mark Hunter :
without a doubt.
Larry Levine :
And if you want to, if you want to change it, you got to change your approach. You got to throw a stake in the ground and say at this point forward, I’m going to take the law of marginal gain on all of this. And I’m saying I’m going to start coaching and training my sales people based on understanding what makes them tick, what are they capable of, what’s their will to sell, what’s their scene, what’s what’s there. There’s a lot of sales people out there that are driving their sales car with their foot on the gas pedal and their foot on the brake at the exact same time not getting maximum results. And leaders aren’t aware of this. We as leaders got to understand when to come alongside and gently tap their foot on the gas. As we’re doing that. They got to understand how to help them remove the parking brake.
Larry Levine :
Which is all the mindset issues that salespeople have which is causing them to get into these price sensitive conversations, which is where we started our conversation.
Mark Hunter :
And it comes back to having the confidence to be able to ask questions. Because again, nothing gets sold without a reason for it being bought. Yeah, we’ve got to understand why is it being bought? Why is it being bought. And we got to work with the customer to see how does that play out. It’s the total cost of ownership. It’s the total benefit of ownership. And it’s not the end, it’s not the actual product. It’s.
Mark Hunter :
My job is to help every one of my customers succeed.
Larry Levine :
Yeah.
Mark Hunter :
When I sell just happens to be the medium I use.
Larry Levine :
- Totally agree with you, Mark. Here’s what I. Here’s what I’d like for people just to think about. Let me phrase this in a way that just makes us agnostic to everybody is I just want you to think about the industry you’re in and the product that you sell. So everyone just get a picture of that. And as you’re thinking about this here’s what I want you to think about. Do you want to be known as a sales rep who sells whatever you sell, or do you want to be known as a business professional who happens to sell what you sell?
Mark Hunter :
I love that. I love that. You know what, though? We’re gonna have to end it right there because that is a powerful way to close. Larry, you’ve written two great books, Selling in a Post Trust World and Selling from the Heart. How do people get in touch with you?
Larry Levine :
Not too hard to find. You can find me all over LinkedIn. But if you really want to know what we’re up to at Selling from the Heart, just go to sellingfromtheheart.net or salesindex AI and you’ll be able to find out exactly what we’re up to.
Mark Hunter :
And you’ve got two great podcasts.
Larry Levine :
Tell the audience about them for 10 years strong now. And Mark, thank you. You’ve been a frequent guest on the Selling from the Heart podcast. We’re going 10 years strong. That’s kind of what burst this whole selling for the Heart movement. About a year and a half ago, we spun up a another podcast called Culture from the Heart. And real quick, for those of you who don’t know, we created a network. That network’s called from the Heart Business Network.
Larry Levine :
And we just brought on our newest, latest podcast with Harry Spade, the authentic sales manager.
Mark Hunter :
I love it. I love it. Larry, you’re absolutely a great friend. We’ve known each other for nearly 10 years, probably what, eight or nine years now?
Larry Levine :
Yeah, just about. Something like that.
Mark Hunter :
Yeah, Always great if the listeners realize that we normally talk at like, I don’t know, 6am Your time. Because you live on the west coast and you are an early riser, but that’s what overachievers do, they rise early. Larry, thank you for being on the show. You’ve been listening to the Sales center podcast, two episodes, one like this, where we do a deep dive with a subject matter expert. Larry certainly fills that bill. Second episode is just me where I unpack a single topic. Why do we do the show is to help you see and achieve what you didn’t think was possible. My name is Mark Hunter, the sales hunter, and do me a favor, leave me a review on your favorite podcast app, would you please? Because it’s the way we share this with more people.
Mark Hunter :
Great selling.
